Admiration No More
by rileyluvr13
Summary: Alicia had always admired the life and love between Weasley twins from afar. But now with one of them gone, will the other end up a nobody after all? .:. One-shot. George/Alicia. For the Random Competition on the HPFC forum. .:.


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**Disclaimer:** I do not own the Harry Potter series or anything associated. It all belongs to J.K. Rowling.

**Challenge:** The Random Competition

**Pairing:** George/Alicia

**Prompt:** Candles

**Song:** "Nobody" by Eliza Doolittle

**A/N:** This is my response to the Random Competition on the Harry Potter FanFiction Challenges Forum. Despite the fact that I wrote a majority of this a while back very early in the morning without ever finding the song and therefore never getting a proper listen and just going off the lyrics, I'm kind of pleased with how this came out. Especially since I've never written either George or Alicia before. It was kind of fun.

Anyway, please review. I'd really appreciate it. :)

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_.:. Admiration No More .:._

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She saw the body after the fight.

It was crumpled, like a used tissue or napkin, as if he was just another casualty of the war. His face was flush against the floor, cheek pushing into the ground and puffing his lips out like a fish. His hand, even in its lax state, still held his wand, which was curled lightly in his fingers. The sweater he wore was twisted to the side, and one of his shoes was untied; she half-expected him to jump up and make himself presentable again, only slightly embarrassed to have been caught without a hair in place.

But there was no one left in this body. Alicia Spinnet was smarter than to believe in the kind of magic that could bring wizards back to life.

She knelt down beside him. Her hand traced over his pale arm, the veins receding from his fingertips as quick as a spider's nimble legs. She drew back at the coldness that shocked her to the bone, and she rubbed her fingertips as if to wash the death away from them. Just sitting there and looking at him, she decided that if there was something, _anything_ she could do, she could at least tie his damn shoe so he wouldn't trip over it. Because Alicia knew him; when his toe caught the tight lace, he would make a joke and good-naturedly, with a flick of his wand, tie it up again.

Alicia carefully brushed a piece of dried blood from Fred Weasley's orange hair. She had always thought it to be flaming, but in the face of death, it burned no more than a smothered batch of coals. She carefully adjusted his bloodied sweater, a lump gathering in her throat. Had nobody else who crossed paths with him bothered to take these simple careful gestures to make him more handsome in death? She turned his face to the ceiling, straightened his legs to rest easily at a straight angle, and moved his hands to cover his wand, which was placed diagonally on his chest. She would never have dared to do this to the dead, but then again, this wasn't just any dead.

She heard the scuffling of shoes down an adjacent corridor, and she abruptly stood up, dusting the dried blood off of her fingers. When George Weasley came around the corner, her breath caught in her throat.

The resemblance to Fred – in more than one way – was striking.

His face was solemn, and she couldn't recall ever seeing it like that before. He glanced at her and made a visible yet failing effort to keep his eyes from peeling down to his dead brother's body. Alicia took a few steps forward, not knowing what she would do, but knowing that she couldn't just stand there any longer.

But just as abruptly as he had come, he turned around and left.

His retreating footsteps left Alicia frozen. The echo of his shoes on the stone floor kept reminding her how lonely she was. Her eyes flicked from the pale boy lying on the floor to the dim light left in the corridor that George had retreated down. She hated to leave Fred alone again, but she felt that she couldn't stay next to him for another second. If his own brother could barely stand to be with Fred for another moment, Alicia certainly couldn't find the power to do so either.

She stepped softly over to peer around the corner. George's lanky outline was seen striding down the hall. Torches lined the corridor on either sides at odd angles, and his shadow splayed out over the walls in overlapping and dizzying patterns. She glanced once back at Fred. Now that he was a little more cleaned up, it just appeared as if he simply decided to take a nap in the middle of the floor with a bucket of blood on his sweater. The room was dark, and she hated to leave him but did anyway.

Alicia started down the corridor, away from Fred, and tried to find George, but the myriad of shadows that painted clues on the walls was to be seen no more. Now her own lithe figure, fit from playing Quidditch for the Harpies for the past two years, was casting its own design across the pieces of blasted stone and dust strewn across the floor and the occasional piece of torn black robe. She was a good girl, and when she had been a student at Hogwarts, she had rarely been out of bed after curfew; so now, unlike George, she hardly knew where she was at this time of night because everything looked so different. The air was shimmering with the adrenaline that came with the end of the war. Still, she felt there was little to celebrate.

When she reached the end of the corridor, she had expected to allow the glow from the end of George's wand light her way left or right. But it was nowhere to be seen. She couldn't hear any other noises as well, aside from the soft spring wind that blew through the trees in the courtyard in front of her. She decided to turn to the left, and she continued down the new hallway.

A breeze lifted her long black hair from her shoulders. She started to shiver, but she knew it wasn't only because of the wind. The air in Hogwarts was supposed to be convivial, joyful, full of celebration. Oh, and everyone felt that way. However, no one dared show it on the outside. Not while there were tons of injuries and a coupe dozen dead bodies lined up in the Great Hall, as if they were put out in front of the entire school to see and secretly wish, "Wow, I'm glad that isn't me."

Alicia trailed her hands over the columns that supported the arches leading to the courtyard and looked up at the dark sky, from which the last traces of the Dark Mark were finally fading. She had gotten the call from the Weasleys themselves, and she had Apparted here faster than ever. She had always wanted to fight, always wanted to be there to protect everyone she loved. She had imagined that she'd save another's life and be filled with happiness in the end; however, she had failed to protect one particular man, and it was weighing on her as hard as the charged thickness in the air.

The jarring sound of metal scratching on the stone distracted her from her stargazing. She whipped her head to face a door to a classroom next to her. She slowly walked over to it, apprehensive as to what she'd find. She creaked it open, and she saw George inside.

He was sitting on a table, his feet resting on the chair that created all the noise. His head was bowed, but when Alicia entered, his face snapped up. He appeared extra jumpy, like he had drunk too much caffeine and was attune to every little noise. However, his sluggish movements – how he gazed slowly at Alicia as if he didn't believe she was there, hung his head back down, and dropped his shoulders – gave a different impression. The entire room was dark, except for a strip of moonlight through a window that fell across the left side of his face.

His blue eyes stared at her, uncomprehending. She could see indecision in the one that was cast into the light, the flickering behind it that failed to understand. Understand why Alicia was there, understand the end of the war, understand the causalities like his brother.

She took a few more steps into the classroom. Alicia hadn't talked to George since last summer, when she had come with her younger sister into their joke shop. Today they had exchanged a few brief words before the fight, but that was it. They had used to talk almost every day when they were a part of the Gryffindor Quidditch team back in Hogwarts. He would smack her butt with his beater when she wasn't looking, and she would spend the whole practice chasing him around the pitch, hurling quaffles at him and calling him a prat.

Or there were times when Angelina Johnson, Katie Bell and she would be having some girl talk up in their dormitory, and the Weasley twins would come knocking at the window while riding one measly broomstick that was ready to tip over, their hair shining like beacons in the darkness. The girls would giggle, but they would get up and let the twins in anyway. Fred would stumble in, grin, and say, "You like to keep us waiting, don't you? You know, it's not everyday that a pair of fantastic-looking twins show up at your window." To which Angelina would smack him over the head, and the five of them would stay up drinking firewhiskey until six in the morning, and Oliver Wood would harp them about the alcohol on their breaths and the purple bags under their eyes at a game the next day.

But it was worth it. So worth it. Always worth it with them.

It was then that Alicia realized her mistake. _Them_. Never just one.

George's eyes set off so many memories, but she blushed when she realized that she couldn't remember one with solely the boy in front of her. She couldn't remember either of them as a single individual. Did she really hope that as she stood there, staring at the lonely Weasley twin, Fred would pop out of somewhere and crack a joke, and Alicia would smile in relief that everything was normal again like it was back in Hogwarts all those years ago?

It was too weird. He was alone. He was vulnerable. He was a single person, and he was hurt beyond belief. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't nudging his brother with his elbow, or calling out, "Spin for me, Spinnet, to get your damn Transfiguration book back!" He was completely and totally out of his element.

He was lost, and he knew it, and Alicia, who could catch a quaffle with one hand, was powerless to try and catch him.

"George," she said softly.

He didn't move an inch. He kept staring at her, his eyes guarded, his mouth unwilling to move from its tight lockdown. She remembered had memorized those features of his face from years ago, but they were always full of life and love and fun. Now, she only felt herself breaking down just by watching the pools of pain stirring in his eyes.

"I don't know what to say," she said, and her throat was closing up. She was losing all the remains of her sanity so quickly. The memories were flooding her, choking her, reminding her that nothing would ever be the same. There would be no complement to this orphaned man, no second dazzling smile to join the first, no witty two-liner that the other could complete.

They had never failed to make her laugh, and she had always looked upon them with admiration for this. Admiration, and longing. Longing to share the bond they had, to join in on their secrets smiles and knowing glances and linked minds. She wanted that connection, and she wanted to know what it was like to feel so close to someone that this would just come naturally. But only one of them was left now. And all the secrets of their happiness were taken with the other.

They were closest wizards that had ever been born, and life was cruel to take one away forever.

Alicia took a few more steps forward into the room. She had to stay strong, even though she felt the burning sensation in the back of her throat that meant she was about to cry. Merlin, she missed it. She missed their never-ending humor, passion for pranks, spunk and attitude at flying out at Umbridge in their seventh year, determination in inventing the perfect Puking Pasties for their joke shop, and finally opening up Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes for everyone. They were incredible, and she loved them in her own special way from afar, and she couldn't believe that she had gone so long without ever taking the time to notice it or tell them herself.

"Oh, George." Her voice cracked.

And he himself did too. His face bowed down to his knees, and she heard the choked sob that escaped his lips. "Alicia," he moaned, and she rushed forward, feeling her own wetness that was streaming down her cheeks. She hopped up on the table next to him. He was powerless, he was lonely, and he was lost, without anyone to fix him. The only one who could now belonged to a different world.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and she pulled him to her chest. He didn't resist, as any other grown twenty-year-old man would have tried to do. However, this man was broken, and this man bended to her will, his face contorted in pain and suffering, confronted with his worst nightmares in real life, as he tentatively reached his hands up to his face to ball them into fists and cry into them. She held him tighter, rocked him as his cheek leaned into her shoulder and stained her sweater with salty water. Those blue eyes, fogged by tears that she knew would never be fully gone, were closed against her robes. His orange hair, mussed and sticking up at odd ends, dimmed with each passing moment, losing its radiance and power and falling from form along with Fred.

She leaned down and kissed the top of his head, the only consolation she could offer. Her tears trailed down onto his hair, and because of her delusional mind, she tried to kiss each one away as she rubbed his arms, as if she could stop the transfer of her own suffering away from him. But she felt more and more powerless as he still cried on. His chest heaved, and sobs wracked his body; he sounded like a baby hippogriff that couldn't find its mother.

His face, however, finally turned upward. The moon was shining diagonally across his face, and his eyes, now the color of a murky lake, didn't glow in the little light. Tears shined on his cheeks, and Alicia knew tears were shining on hers too. He sat up, slowly, his eyes swimming in and out of focus. He moved closer to her, and she let out a loud, choked sob.

This man who was broken, soulless, and damaged, leaned closer to her and silenced her tears with a kiss.

It wasn't pleasant, and it wasn't pretty. His lips mashed into hers, and his teeth grit at her lips. She could hardly breathe, but he had initiated it, and this had to mean he was feeling _something_, goddammit, and this was something that she could give him, so she kissed him back. Angrily, full of sorrow and regret for Fred, for the bittersweet success of the war, for everything she had taken for granted back in Hogwarts and now had full come circle to mourn because of this searing and painful rip in her heart. They rocked forward and back on the desk, fighting to prove something to one another, fighting to show one another that each could still be strong. It was a war between them, and the water on their faces mixed in with their wild battle of grief.

He suddenly broke it off. The side of his face now shunned her, the moonlight glittering across his tear-streaked face. She was panting heavily and looking down at him. She could now see the grisly remains of the hole on his head where his ear used to be, and she stared at it as if it would reveal to her the extent of his suffering. His hand was just inches from her hip, spread with an open palm on the table as he was trying to get a grip on reality again.

Alicia didn't know what to do, so she blurted, "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

She wasn't sure if it was for Fred, or for kissing George, or for everything that she had let happen to their friendship.

He didn't lift his head at first. He continued to stare down at his hands and tried to even out his breathing. She hadn't heard him say a single word since he had announced to a crowd of wizards and witches in the Great Hall that Fred was dead, and she wasn't sure if he could utter another sound tonight.

But eventually, he stared straight into her eyes. Those blue orbs were motionless in the sea of white surrounding them, and she could hardly dare to breathe, as he simply said, "In this screwed up world, there's no reason to say you're sorry. Just laugh it off."

She couldn't find anything to say in response to the philosophy. The philosophy that Fred and George had lived by for all of the twenty years since their birth. How crudely and ironically it applied to this moment in George's life.

Alicia looked down at her hands. They were shaking her lap. She reached into the pocket of her robes and, slowly and tentatively, brought out her wand. It was made with oak wood with four unicorn hairs, the same one she had used for her entire life. George flinched as she slowly twirled the wand in her hands.

And then she had an idea.

She slowly flicked her wand, muttering a spell under her breath, and two candles appeared in her lap. They were red, for remembrance, which Alicia vaguely recalled from her lessons in Diviniation back in fifth year. She held one out to George, and he took it silently with a shaking hand. She wasn't sure he had the strength to stay upright by himself for much longer, so she reached one hand around and dragged his head to rest on her shoulder. The hole that was his ear was pressed up against her robes.

She held her own candle in her hand, and with another flick of her wand, both lit up with a small flickering flame. She knew that the candles were short, and the wax would run out soon enough, but she didn't think George cared, and she knew that she certainly didn't either.

He stared at the flame in front of him, watched the flare flicker and cast shadows across the wall. If anyone had looked in the classroom at that moment, they would have seen two silhouettes, one leaning on the other's shoulder, both holding a candle each. Alicia wanted to believe that she was holding hers in grievance for Fred, but she knew that she couldn't lie to herself. She was holding one _as_ Fred, holding one as the deceased brother that George needed right now. She couldn't be anything better than that for this poor and broken man.

So Alicia tugged him tighter to her, and he obliged and leaned into her.

They simply gazed at the flames in front of them that illuminated the empty classroom that George's sobs had echoed through just minutes ago. She tried to picture Fred's spirit in the strength of the yellow, the orange, the red that licked the night air and tried to see if it had any effect at all on the lone twin. But he was only still against her, unmoving and steadfastly staring at the flickering of the candle.

"What's wrong with being a nobody now?" he whispered quietly in a raspy voice.

Alicia wasn't sure if he was talking to her or not, but even though his eyes never trained away from the quiet flicker of the candle, she was sure that he intended for her to hear him. She felt the hot wax start to drip down the sides of the candle, sizzling her skin and making her want to cry out in pain. But she didn't dare let go of it, not even for a second, and didn't dare make a sound.

And as she pondered his question, she thought of all the times in Hogwarts and after her graduation. All the times she was just _there_. All the times she never bothered to tell Fred and George how much she admired them, how much she appreciated them, how much she missed them once they were gone from her life. And now, how one of them would never come back, permanently.

Fred and George had always been sombodies. People who had personality, who had the life and vitality that everyone wished for. They had a connection together, but now, it seemed, George didn't believe in the fight. He was losing faith in continuing on and seeming to prefer just drifting off into being a regular person, without a special spark or quirk or personality or sense to speak his or her mind, perhaps an average chaser for a professional Quidditch team who never needed anybody and never bothered to try with anyone until they were gone.

"Never be a nobody, George Weasley," she whispered. "I should know because I am one. But you'll always be somebody."

It was true. Alicia was a nobody. She had always been a nobody. She was always observing the world and never acting in it. She had let Fred and George always overshadow her without another word, wishing that she could live like them. She had let George kiss her without reserve, but he knew that it wouldn't amount to another with this passive woman. She was a whipping pole, taking all the beatings and always there. She was a nobody that could be vacated by somebody, a somebody that someone needed right now. Fred.

George turned his head on her shoulder to look up at her, and there was a deep question in his eyes. He couldn't admit that Fred was dead, that he believed there was no point anymore in even trying without the other half that completed him. He felt like blending, would be happy to blend, to be what was easier instead of being what he wasn't without Fred.

But Alicia shook her head at him. "Even without him. You can do it."

He kept looking at her as if he hadn't comprehended, but she knew that he heard her words. The wax was now dripping down his candle as well, but it wasn't painful for him. She saw that it was invigorating him. The blue pools that were his eyes started to fill up with tears and flicker along with the flame. He shut his eyes, shook his head, and reached another hand up to grip his candle.

Alicia knew he was letting Fred course through him.

Grieving was a fickle and strange thing. It could be done in many ways. Crying, smashing, fighting, isolating, sobbing, giving up. Full of desperation, pain, and suffering. But Alicia could tell that George had found his own way with her help. They had lit a candle and lit the fire that Fred would fuel to keep George going.

She brushed the hair back from George's face. It was a luminous orange again in the flickering candlelight.

He had grieved in this newfound strength. And although they hadn't laughed once, Alicia knew it was a sick joke that Fred had definitely appreciated.


End file.
